Consumer Watchdog is a (fiercely) independent consumer rights and advocacy organisation campaigning on behalf of the consumers of Botswana, helping them to know their rights and to stand up against abuse. Contact us at watchdog@bes.bw, call us on +267 3904582 or find us on Facebook by searching for Consumer Watchdog Botswana. Everything we do for the consumers of Botswana has always been and always will be entirely free.

Monday, 28 November 2011

"Verna Ferreira from FedEx has made my day, no my week. What customer service she gave. A little frazzled I walked in to FedEx to ship some Christmas presents off to the States. She came into the reception and spotted me just about to fill in my paperwork. I was greeted with a huge hello and she took the paperwork from me and said she knows my stuff and will fill in the rest for me (quilts take 3 pages of paperwork) All I had to do was sign the pages and give her the addresses. I also did not have quite enough money but had a box about to come to my store on Wednesday so she said she will deal with it, I am a good trusted customer so I can pay for both at the same time. My box went out tonight. On top she will just make sure and track it and advise if there are any problems. What a lovely service. I might add I have not seen her in over a year so she is not a good friend, this was just pure and simple GREAT CUSTOMER RELATIONS."

Saturday, 26 November 2011

I’m a big believer in firing people. Companies should fire more people, more often and more speedily.

Of course I’m not saying that this should be done randomly, carelessly or without due process. In fact I’m saying that this should be done on the old-fashioned principle of discrimination.

“Discrimination” is one of those words that’s got a bad name over the last few decades. It’s usually misunderstood to mean “unfair discrimination” which overlooks the fact that there’s such a thing as “fair discrimination” as well. The unfair variety refers to hiring or firing people perhaps because they’re a woman, they’ve fallen pregnant, they follow a certain religion, their skin is a particular colour or they’re gay. Fair-minded people recognize that these things have no relevance to somebody’s ability to do their job effectively.

However, fair-minded people who run businesses are entitled to discriminate fairly. They can hire a better qualified person rather than a less qualified one or someone who has better quality experience than another. Note that I said “better quality” experience, not just lots of it. A colleague of mine was actually criticized by a failed recruit some years ago for not hiring him. “But I’ve got a Master’s degree and lots of experience, you have to hire me”, she was told. She struggled to find a polite way of telling him that this meant nothing, he’d came across as an arrogant and self-centred ass, that’s why they didn’t select him.

It’s the same with firing people. There comes a time when poorly-performing staff have to be shown the door. We’ve all met them, the sullen bank teller, the surly waiter and the blank-faced (and often blank-brained) public servant who makes it clear you’re interrupting his web-surfing or reading of the Daily News. Give them a few chances to improve, some mentoring and set some deadlines but then get rid of them.

There are, however, times when employees should do right now. Not tomorrow but today. Not this afternoon but this morning.

An employment lawyer can outline the reasons why you can do this with more authority than me but there’s one major reason why I think you can be justified in giving an employee the boot. Or why you deserve to be fired on the spot. One reason is lying when you were hired. If an employer discovers that you lied in your application to join her company she can fire you. You have, after all, committed a crime. Obtaining a financial benefit on the basis of a lie is fraud. If you claim to have resigned form your previous job and it turns out you were fired then you’ve lied. If you make up a job you had then you’ve lied. If, and this is probably the most common lie, you claim to have earned a qualification that’s you didn’t really earn then you’ve lied.

I’ve mentioned the enormous variety of fake universities on the internet before. These entirely bogus online establishments offer bogus qualifications for money. They’re not real universities in any sense. What’s more they are blatantly bogus. It’s made perfectly clear when you contact them that it’s just the money they want. You don’t have to study, you just pay up and you get a bogus qualification of your choice.

We recently got an email from someone asking about one of these fake places, calling itself “Headway University”. It has a fairly presentable web site that makes it perfectly clear that degrees of various levels are available just for money. Like many of them there’s an online chat facility where you can talk to an “advisor” so I went online and asked them if I could get a degree from them. This is part of the conversation I had with their “advisor”:

Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with 'Ethan Myers'
Ethan Myers: Hello. How may I assist you?
Me: Hi
Me: I want to know how quickly I can get a bachelors degree
Ethan Myers: you can get it in about 10 to 12 days
Me: oh that's brilliant, really that quickly?
Ethan Myers: yes
Ethan Myers: What we do is we take down your life experience, that is your working experience and your past educational qualification, convert them into credit hours, if these credit hours are equivalent to the credit hours that are require to complete your desired degree then you qualify and we award the degrees accordingly, if you are successfully evaluated we start with the registration process registering you and your documents with the university and the Accreditation bodies and after that we make sure that the documents are shipped out to you in the next 10 working days.
Me: does that mean i don't have to study?
Ethan Myers: yes, no studies require if you have relevant working experience
Me: which university awards the degree?
Ethan Myers: Headway University
Me: and how much will this cost?
Ethan Myers: $648

This approach is the same with all these fake universities. I’ve had similar encounters with fake universities calling themselves Ashwood, Rochville, Belford, McFord, Woodfield, Corllins, the University of SouthCentral Los Angeles and Universal Degrees. All of these are fake.

The worry is quite how many of our employees, colleagues and even bosses got their jobs by claiming to have these qualifications. I can’t believe that anyone with one of these degrees thinks they earned it. They know, we all know, that you get a degree by doing a lot of work. Everyone intelligent enough to buy a fake degree online knows what they’ve done.

I stumbled over your blog when I was searching for info about Headway University.

You see, a couple of days ago I registered with Woodfield University for a bachelors degree and later same day they called me and gave me some info. I was suspicious for the cheap price and the fact that I did not have to do anything to receive the degree except for paying them.

They sent couple of mail for me to say that they received my info and so on. But then I got one more call from Headway University saying the exact same thing as Woodfield. And they sent me the exact same emails as Woodfield.

So are they the same school or something?

Yes, we’ve commented on Headway University and it’s clear that they are entirely fake. They are nothing more than a web site for a scam company that sells fake degrees. No studying is required and, as you’ve realized, all they want is your money. The fake Headway University claims to be accredited by the "International Accreditation Body for Online Education" which is itself a fake company, presumably set up by the same people that created Headway.

The so-called “Woodfield University” is exactly the same, offering everything from High School Diplomas to Doctorates, the PhDs for a mere $725. They also claim to be accredited by the “Universal Accreditation Agency for Online Education” which is another fake organisation.

Clearly you’ve realised that this “university” is bogus and I urge you not to be tempted to buy a fake degree. Don’t run the risk of being fired or prosecuted!

[P.S. Several people have contacted us about the so-called “Headway University”. There seems to be a hunger for fake degrees. Please don’t take the risk. It’ll be YOU that’s prosecuted, not them.]

Dear Consumer’s Voice #2

I have been renting a house for the past 3 years and have always paid my rent and have taken good care of the property. Before I moved in I paid a security deposit of two months. Every year the rental has increased by 10% and it has reached a level where I can no longer afford it and have therefore have been looking for alternative accommodation. I notified him at the beginning of this month that I would be leaving at the end of the month.

I have always feared that my landlord would never pay me back my security deposit so decided on my own not to the rent for November. My landlord is not amused by this and has this week sent me an email stating that I should vacate his property by the 19th of Nov at 10am. I replied back stating that it is not possible for me to vacate at that time of the month and I can only vacate a week later. In response to this the landlord said I no longer have any right to occupy his property and I should without fail vacate. Can the landlord force me to leave like this? Will I get my deposit back?

One problem is that you are in the wrong by not paying the rent. The landlord is entitled to deduct the amount you owe from the deposit you gave him at the beginning of the lease. I suspect you’ll have trouble getting back anything left from the deposit.

The better news is that he can't just evict you like this. He also has to obey the terms of the lease, even if you are in breach of it. He needs to give you formal notice that you need to leave. Your lease says he must give you a month’s notice and he must stick to that. Even then he can't evict you without a court order. Any efforts by him to force you to leave would be illegal and you should call the police if he tries anything.

I suggest that you put your decision to leave in writing and mention the clause in the lease that mentions the notice period. Make it clear to him in the letter that he can deduct the outstanding rent from the security deposit but that you expect the balance to be repaid. Beware though that he might now be so angry that he'll be difficult. You should also say that you are aware of your rights and will move out on a specific date, in accordance with the notice period.

Thursday, 24 November 2011

Be warned. A company from South Africa, calling itself "Wealth Solutions" was on GabzFM yesterday morning talking about a presentation they're doing tonight at a local cinema offering riches and transformation from poverty to wealth. I suspect they are, in fact, Cashflow Pro in disguise.

P.S. There is no company registered in South Africa called "Wealth Solutions".

Friday, 18 November 2011

A few weeks ago we were asked by a reader to investigate a South African company that had invited her to a presentation. She’d been told that she could earn lots of money trading foreign exchange online. She asked is this could be true.

Rather than be totally suspicious I contacted the presenter and asked her to explain. She told me, by SMS, that the company can “teach people how to trade forex online and make between 10 and 30 percent of their investment every month”. She went on to say that “we open a trading account for you and you can put any amount you want to start trading with but we recommend US$1,000”.

My first reaction is that nobody, I mean nobody, in the world makes that sort of profit consistently and here’s how I can justify that claim. If mere financial mortals like you, me and the people attending this presentation can make that sort of profit, why aren’t banks doing it? Why aren’t American and European banks, who are in such desperate states, making this sort of money? Why aren’t governments around the world earning a little extra this way? The reason is simple. It’s impossible to make that sort of money with any sort of investment.

You really have to ask yourself why on earth the creators of the scheme aren’t just quietly making their own fortunes instead of inviting you to join. What’s in it for them when you join?

The answer is actually very simple. What they really want is the P12,000 fee you have to pay them to join the scheme.

Once you do some digging the situation becomes more intriguing. Cashflow Pro is the brainchild of a South African called Jabulani Ngcobo. According to the South African press Ngcobo is currently under investigation by the South African Reserve Bank and the South African Police Commercial Crimes Unit. It seems that for someone with no qualifications and no business history the amount of money he’s bringing in is too much to be credible. There are suspicions that he’s running either a pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

My dictionary defines a Ponzi scheme quite well. It’s

“a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.”

I’m not going to say that Ngcobo is running a Ponzi scheme but he certainly IS running a scheme that offers unbelievable profits. That sort of company simply can’t be trusted.

I can’t help but compare what Cashflow Pro offers with what Stock Market Direct used to offer. Well they did until their founder, Tony Samuels (or whatever his real name was) skipped the country with several million of investors money. They also offered a rather exaggerated sense of profit, took a LOT of money from people to join and then actually offered very little in return.

I asked a friend (thanks Rob) who knows a bit about forex trading a question. “How easy is it to make money from trading forex?” His answer was simple. “As easy as it is to lose money trading forex.”

The more I think about it the more I’m tempted to answer the question myself by saying “It’s easier to lose money trading forex than it is to make it.” Here’s why. Forex trading is just a form of gambling that the exchange rate between two currencies will change in your favour. You buy Mongolian Togrogs (No, I’m not making that up) using your US dollars when you think they’re cheap and later sell them when their value against the dollar has increased. The difference, minus the commission you pay to your broker or bank, is your profit. The problem is that exchange rates are notoriously unpredictable and they rarely change dramatically. The other problem is that if the Togrog goes up, the dollar, compared to it, has gone down. For every increase there’s another decrease. Half of all exchange rate changes are bad for investors. Half the time, unless you’re very lucky or wise, you’ll lose value. However you have to add on to that the costs in commissions and fees.

However, all of this is based on the assumption that the forex trading scheme is legitimate.

According to the North American Securities Administrators Association and as reported on Wikipedia:

“off-exchange forex trading by retail investors is at best extremely risky, and at worst, outright fraud.”

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued an online warning to consumers that said:

“In a typical case, investors may be assured of reaping tens of thousands of dollars in just a few weeks or months, with an initial investment of only $5,000. Often, the investor’s money is never actually placed in the market through a legitimate dealer, but simply diverted - stolen - for the personal benefit of the con artists.”

They conclude with a simple suggestion to investors:

“If you are tempted to invest, make sure you understand these products and above all, only invest what you can afford to lose.”

The lesson is simple. Anyone offering you a Get Rich Quick scheme is more interested in their own income than they are in yours. Anyone who needs your money before you can join the scheme is after the joining fee above everything else. Anyone offering you quick gains on the stock market or from foreign exchange is lying or a fool. Or both.

I bought the car from a dealer on 6th September 2011 for P33,500. On the 15th October, I made a trip to Francistown only for the vehicle to overheat 100km outside Gaborone. It is now costing me P7,500 to have this vehicle towed and repaired. We cannot even source the parts here in Botswana. It was found that the radiator had a crack, thus causing the engine to overheat.

Is there anyway that the seller can compensate as the car was only a month in my possession?

I suspect that there's little you can do in this situation. I imagine the car was sold "voetstoots" or "as seen" and although that doesn't mean they can knowingly sell you something that isn't of merchantable quality it does mean the onus is on the you, the buyer, to have the vehicle fully examined before paying.

Even if you were able to prove that the problem was there when you bought the car it would be very difficult that he knew about it.

Unfortunately I suspect this is going to be difficult to resolve. The only thing I can suggest is that you contact the dealer and see if they’re prepared to help you get the problem fixed.

Dear Consumer’s Voice #2

I received an email from a certain Mr Marc Bruce claiming that my email has won 800 000 British Pounds to which I was asked to select whether I wanted to be paid by cheque or direct transfer to my bank account. I selected being paid by cheque. Now they want me to pay US$1,345 before they can send the cheque in order to release the claim money. I am now becoming skeptical about their authenticity and integrity . Is it possible that you can investigate on my behalf if they are indeed reputable people that I can trust and send my money to.

This is a scam.

There are several clues, Firstly if the "prize" is in UK Pounds, why do you have to pay the fee in US Dollars? Then there are the various strangely worded English phrases that wouldn’t be said by someone from a real bank, like:

"your total sum which is in CHEQUE"
"Escrowed Non- Resident Pounds Bank Account"
"we cannot deduct any money from as an internal control measure"

The email doesn't come from Barclays, it's actually from a free email account. Similarly the phone number is a cellphone number, no landline numbers are given.

Everything in this email is fake. There is no prize money, these people are NOT from Barclays Bank, all they want is the "advance fee" of $1,345.

Please don't send them any money, you'll never see it again.

Dear Consumer’s Voice #3

I am a bit sceptic about this work at home offer called Elite Business Systems which I happened to stumble upon while browsing the net. The language seem fine, but their trace is a bit vague and not easy to follow. I do not know if should go ahead and order the starter pack or just unsubscribe.

Please kindly advise as I have come to trust you with exposing scams.

I actually covered this particular Get Rich Quick scheme on our blog a few weeks ago. "Elite Business Systems" is actually a front for a Herbalife distributor.

Like all of these schemes there's virtually no chance of actually making any money, particularly if it's a Multi Level Marketing system like Herbalife. Herbalife in the USA are required to disclose the average income that it’s distributors make. In 2010 83% of the distributors between them made barely 9% of the income. The average income was about $800 and that’s not profit, that’s their income before they paid their bills. Almost all the income was made by less than 10% of the distributors.

Please avoid this scheme. If it sounds too good to be true then it certainly IS.

Monday, 14 November 2011

In July I had a text message exchange with a Herbalife distributor who made some rather reckless claims about the products he was selling. He was told off by Herbalife for making the claims. Their Vice President for Europe and Africa said that making “specific claims related to individual medical conditions is unacceptable” and that they would “correct the individual concerned”.

However, here comes another one offering miracles.

Another text message conversation ensued... I freely confess that I might have (ever so slightly) entrapped him but I'm not the one claiming to be able to reverse heart conditions.

For reference, Section 397 of the Penal Code says:

"397. Offence to publish prohibited advertisement
(1) Any person shall be guilty of an offence who as principal, agent or servant, publishes or causes or assists to be published any prohibited advertisement."

Section 396 defines a "prohibited advertisement" as:

"any advertisement of any medicine or surgical appliance referring to the administration of, or offering to administer any treatment whether directly or indirectly or by implication, as being effective for any of the following purposes ...
(b) the prevention, relief or cure of Bright's disease, cancer, consumption or tuberculosis, leprosy, lupus, diabetes, epilepsy or fits, locomotor ataxy, paralysis or infantile paralysis;
(c) the cure of arteriosclerosis, septicaemia, diphtheria, drops, erysipelas, gallstones, kidney stones and bladder stones, goitre, heart disease, tetanus or lockjaw, pleurisy, pneumonia, scarlet-fever, smallpox, trachoma, amenorrhoea, hernia or rupture, blindness or any structural or organic ailment of the auditory system;"

Friday, 11 November 2011

There’s a hilarious joke that all psychology students are told in their first lecture. What’s the difference between a psychologist and a magician? One pulls rabbits from a hat, the other pulls habits from a rat. See, I said it was hilarious. In fact psychology is full of jokes. Just think of anything ever said, written, thought or published by Freud or Jung. Hilarious, pseudoscientific, implausible and non-falsifiable nonsense.

But habits are one of the things psychologists think about a lot. During my own, mercifully brief time in a Psychological Medicine Department one of our key tasks was to teach people ways of overcoming the psychologically dangerous habits they’d developed. Habits like anxiety attacks, phobic reactions to certain situations or generally just being pathetic.

Not all habits are psychologically damaging though. Some are just traditions or patterns of behaviour that we can’t imagine being different. I can’t imagine choosing to buy a computer that isn’t an Apple or flying with an airline other than Virgin Atlantic (when I have the choice). It might be the same with your choice of bank, shoe shop or restaurant.

Sometimes habits can be more dangerous than just being a bit conservative and avoiding new experiences. Sometimes they can pose a serious risk. Being overly trusting can be a habit. It can be such a habit that it’s impossible to distinguish it from gullibility.

It’s often easy to think the victims of scams are just plain gullible, certainly after they’ve fallen for it. Of course it’s more complicated than that. Successful scammers spend a LONG time cultivating their victims, waiting a bit longer for a higher return.

A reader got in touch last week saying:

“I am expecting a parcel from the UK and it looks like the parcel has money in it and it is now stuck in Malaysia. They charged me for money laundering and I have paid the charge now they want me to pay for insurance and tax. I would like you to investigate for me because they sent me the charges and they did not say anything about tax and insurance.”

Can you smell a scam? I haven’t been told the whole story yet but I know what’s going on here. This reader is the victim of a romantic scam. Over a few months she was electronically seduced by someone claiming to be in the UK (but no doubt actually in West Africa). She probably met him either on Facebook or a dating site and he gradually ingratiated himself and, on her side at least, love blossomed. Of course he was probably doing this to dozens of other women around the world at the same time. He would have copied and pasted his expressions of love from one email to another making a production line of fake romance. He also would have copied the promise to courier a package of gifts to her. This fake package included a “set of daimond ring, 1 London Suit, 2 sets of silver jewelries, 3 perfume, 2 Rolex wrist watches, digital camera, Black Berry phone and photos”.

Our victim’s only crime is gullibility, the habit of believing things that are too good to be true. The tragedy in this case is that she was gullible enough to believe the email she received saying that the package had been stopped in Malaysia and that she had been “charged” by the Malaysian authorities for “money laundering”. She was gullible enough to pay them over P8,000 for the fictitious fine they were imposing.

Although there is no chance she’ll ever get her money back I hope that her habit of believing strange things has been broken.

Scams aren’t the only risk that bad habits can provide. What about having the contents of you bank accounts stolen?

I know of a major bank that allows you to view and change your credit and debit card PIN numbers online, via the internet. Any IT people will know that it’s pretty easy to install what they call a “keylogger” on someone’s PC that tracks every key you press and then sends the history to another computer. In theory they could see your new PIN number from this log of keystrokes. However this bank has thought of that and you also need to get a special message to your cellphone to confirm it’s really you logging on. It’s probably fairly secure.

What worries me more than this is the habit that this might create. If you and I get into the habit of entering details as sensitive as our ATM PIN numbers on web sites where else might we feel comfortable entering them?

Over the last couple of years I’ve seen a number of increasingly high quality “phishing” emails. These claim to be from your bank and usually alert you to a security breach in your account somewhere. They link to a web sites that looks exactly like your bank’s web site but in fact is hosted somewhere else. The web page asks for your basic Internet banking username and password but often also asks for your ATM PIN. Of course as soon as you enter all these details they disappear into a database owned by organized crime. If you’ve entered correct logon details you can assume that within moments the crooks will have logged on to your bank and stolen your money.

My concern is the habit of trusting things on the Internet. If your bank encourages you to enter things as sensitive as PINs, aren’t you more likely to trust a phishing site? While I’m a big believer in how the Internet can improve things it’s also the most untrustworthy thing I’ve ever encountered.

We need to get into the habit of not trusting the Internet unless we have a very good reason to do so.

Thursday, 10 November 2011

Some months ago I met a lady on one of the social networks and we end up falling in love. Just recently the lady explained that she is Liberian but she is kept in a refugee camp in Senegal. Also, she said that she lost her father and mother through a terrorist attack. Her father left her with money which is in the Bank of Scotland and her father assigned her as a next of kin.

Now she wants to claim the money from the Bank but the Bank refused and told her to look for a foreigner to claim that money on her behalf due to her refugee status . She appointed me and she told the Bank about me and she also give me the contacts of that Bank for confirmation.

Immediately after contacting the bank they asked me to provide them with a death certificate of her father, an account statement proof of power of attorney from a UN lawyer.

I communicated with the lawyer and he sent me his identity card and he needs $750, equivalent to 4,500 Pula from me through Western Union. I am writing to you to help me to prove the documents whether they are true or false before I decide to send the money. And I seek your help to analyse the whole statement and see if it is a true story or it is a scam?

Unfortunately this is, without any doubt, a scam.

This story of the girl stranded in a refugee camp with an inheritance is very common. The whole thing is an "advance fee" or "419" scam. Everything you’ve been told about this fake refugee girl, the lawyer and the bank are complete lies. There is no money. Nothing is true.

I phoned the scammer myself and it’s remarkable how transparent the story is when you are skeptical. Also, the certificates you were sent are obviously fakes. They can’t even spell the address of the bank correctly.

Please do NOT send anyone connected with this story any money. It will go directly to scammers and you will never receive anything in return and you will never be able to get your money back.

Dear Consumer’s Voice #2

Please inform me if this university is a scam. This university is based in USA and the name is Headway University. They claim to be an online university.

This so-called "university" is not genuine. I'm confident about this for various reasons.

Firstly the text on their web site is a perfect copy of the text at the web site of another unknown "university", "Mcford University" The web sites are identical. I think it’s interesting that the "Headway University" web domain was only registered on 2nd September this year. Mcford was registered on 8th August.

Finally, as far as I can establish neither of these universities or the accreditation body have any history which isn’t surprising given that they were only created in the last few weeks. It’s a fairly common trick by these fake establishments to create their own accreditation body to make them seem respectable.

Headway offer an online chat facility where you can talk to an “advisor” so I went online and asked them if I could get a degree from them. They told me perfectly clearly that I could get a degree in "10 to 12" days, with no prior, relevant qualifications so long as I pay them $648. I think that’s enough evidence that they’re a fake, don’t you?

Please wait for a site operator to respond.You are now chatting with 'Ethan Myers'
Ethan Myers: Hello. How may I assist you?Me: Hi
Me: I want to know how quickly I can get a bachelors degree
Ethan Myers: yes you canMe: i don't understand
Ethan Myers: you can get it in about 10 to 12 daysMe: oh that's brilliant, really that quickly?
Ethan Myers: yes
Ethan Myers: What we do is we take down your life experience, that is your working experience and your past educational qualification, convert them into credit hours, if these credit hours are equivalent to the credit hours that are require to complete your desired degree then you qualify and we award the degrees accordingly, if you are successfully evaluated we start with the registration process registering you and your documents with the university and the Accreditation bodies and after that we make sure that the documents are shipped out to you in the next 10 working days.Me: does that mean i don't have to study?
Ethan Myers: yes, no studies require if you have relevant working experienceMe: which university awards the degree?
Ethan Myers: Headway UniversityMe: and how much will this cost?
Ethan Myers: $648

Please do NOT consider buying one of these fake qualifications. More and more companies are checking qualifications from places like Headway and it’s very easy to spot the suspicious ones. In fact if you do a Google search for “Headway University” one of the first sites you find is ours, describing them as fake. So don’t be tempted!

I did my best to dissect a Get Rich Quick scheme that was advertising on Facebook a few weeks ago but it's back again under a different name and set of pictures. It's still "Elite Business Systems" though.

Although the slogan is different (this time it's "No Boss, No Traffic, Freedom, Step-by-Step Training") you might notice that the pictures of the successful people who've made money are the same fictitious people over and over again.

The same rules apply. Anything claiming to offer you prosperity, happiness and Caribbean cruises without actually telling you how you're going to do this is a Get Rich Quick scheme.

Friday, 4 November 2011

That’s what my mother would say when she heard that someone had been rude to me or to my brothers. The idea is simple, that mere words can do no harm to your feelings so long as you stay strong. Implicit is the idea that “actions speak louder than words”.

Sorry Mum but that’s rubbish. You don’t have to think very hard to remember words that have inspired revolutions, resistance or struggle. Think of the speeches of Martin Luther King during the American civil rights struggle, of Winston Churchill during Britain’s solitary struggle against the Nazis, think of almost anything Nelson Mandela ever said.

The bad news is that words can cause damage as well as inspire people. For instance, business people of my age in the UK talk about “doing a Ratner” meaning saying something that causes serious damage to a business, or in an extreme case, collapsing a company completely.

This is named after the infamous Gerald Ratner who ran his nationwide, family-owned jewelry business. Known for being cheap and selling low-end products, every town had a branch of Ratners. Their products were cheap but extremely popular. At a corporate dinner in 1991 he made a completely catastrophic speech. Talking about his products he said:

"We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, 'How can you sell this for such a low price?' I say, because it's total crap."

He then went on to describe their earrings as:

"cheaper than a … prawn sandwich but probably wouldn't last as long."

The immediate effect on his business was disastrous. The customers were dreadfully offended and it’s estimated that the value of his company dropped by £500 million, over P5 billion, as a result. All because of two cheap jokes in an after-dinner speech.

More recently Hewlett Packard, one of the world’s largest technology companies, has gone though a similarly dramatic experience. A few weeks ago Leo Apotheker, the company’s CEO, announced a number of key changes. Certain products lines were being cancelled in response to poor sales. There’s nothing wrong with that, sometimes a company needs to take brave decisions. However he didn’t stop there. HP, the world’s largest producer of personal computers was going to stop making personal computers. It was considering “spinning off” it’s PC business.

The effect was astonishing. Within moments it’s share price had nose-dived by 25%. The market was sending a message to HP that while bravery is commendable, recklessness is not. Couple that with Apotheker’s suggestion in an interview with the BBC that "I hope one day people will say 'this is as cool as HP,' not 'as cool as Apple'" and you see someone who needed to go.

Luckily for HP the IT industry is famed for ruthlessness. A month later Apotheker was fired and a new CEO was hired. He didn’t do to badly though, he walked away with a settlement package of around $13 million. Frankly I’d volunteer to screw up a company if they offered me that sort of money.

HP’s new CEO has just announced that she’s reversing the decision to stop making PCs.

Of course Apotheker’s offence was very different from Ratner’s. He wasn’t denigrating his company, he was just openly discussing a change of direction in a way that was too risky. However the lesson is simple. What you say in business matters as much as what you do. The quality of Ratner’s jewelry didn’t change after his comments but he’d slapped his customer’s faces and they didn’t like it. Apotheker so unnerved the shareholders that they started selling their shares like they were on fire when he announced they might shed what was perceived to be their core product.

Not all public statements can be as devastating as these but I do think the danger is there, even at a much smaller level. It’s not just in after dinner speeches or at conferences either that things can go wrong. It’s also the policies and procedures that a company publishes that can send just as dangerous a message. An example.

Last week we heard form a customer who had bought a cellphone from a store in Gabs. Eight days later it went wrong and she took it back to the store for something to be done. That’s when she was told that this particular chain of stores would not respect her rights. Instead she was told that if a phone goes wrong after a mere 7 days she isn’t allowed to return it. Instead, the rules state that she must phone a special phone number for help.

The problem, and it’s a big one, is that these numbers are all South African and none of them can be accessed from Botswana. Three are specific to Cell C, MTN and Vodacom and the fourth was for “Insurance”. None of these are relevant to us. The store flatly refused to help. When we called the company in South Africa they refused to help as well, saying it was up to the store to fix the problem, which of course they’ve refused to do.

I don’t need to mention that they’ve in breach if several sections of the Consumer Protection Regulations, do I?

This store runs the serious risk of “doing a Ratner” or an Apotheker. Their “statement” of their customer care policy is likely to lose them business. Frankly they deserve it.

I was invited to a presentation by a South African company called Cashflow Pro. They said I could earn lots of money trading foreign exchange. Can this be correct?

If you believe what they say then it’s a certainty. However I’m skeptical. I contacted the presenters and was told that they “teach people how to trade forex online and make between 10 and 30 percent of their investment every month”. They said “we open a trading account for you and you can put any amount you want to start trading with but we recommend US$1,000”.

My first objection is that nobody makes that sort of money trading foreign exchange. In fact nobody makes that sort of return doing anything. Ask yourself this. If this sort of return was possible don’t you think the banks would be doing it? Don’t you think they could got out of their banking crisis with a bit of online trading? No, they couldn’t, they didn’t and neither can you or I. That level of return simply isn’t possible.

They way they earn money of course is by charging their recruits a fee. The presenter told me that “the price is P12,000 but for the first 50 people its P7,000 then back to the normal price”.

There’s more. One of the founders of Cashflow Pro is a guy called Jabulani Ngcobo. According to the South African press Ngcobo is currently under investigation by the South African Reserve Bank and the South African Police Commercial Crimes Unit. It seems that for someone with no qualifications and no business history the amount of money he’s bringing in is too much to be credible. There are suspicions that he’s running either a pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

Above all this reminds me of Stock Market Direct who you may recall came to Botswana in a mixture of extravagant promises and deceptions about who and what they were. Their founder, Tony Samuels, eventually skipped the country with a suitcase full of investors cash and hasn’t been since. I’d steer clear if I were you.

Cellphone abuse

We were contacted by a reader who purchased a cellphone for P699 from Edgars in Gaborone. Eight days later it stopped working properly. The problems began when she took the phone back to the store. Her receipt said quite clearly “Do not return this product to the store. If failure occurs after seven (7) days, please call the relevant toll free number below for customer assistance”.

In fact there were four different numbers, all in South Africa and all of them unreachable from Botswana. Three of them referred to Cell C, MTN and Vodacom and the fourth was “Insurance”. Clearly none of them were useful to our reader or anyone else in Botswana.

So did Edgars make a plan to support her? No, they told her that they could not help, that there were no repair agents in Botswana and that all she could do was call the unreachable and wholly inappropriate South African numbers. When she told them she wanted our help she was told that Edgars would not talk to us.

We called Edgars in South Africa to ask for advice. We were told that she should take the phone back to the store. When we explained what had happened the supply of ideas ran dry.

Clearly Edgars do not understand the consumer rights situation in Botswana. The store from whom she bought the phone has failed to abide by Section 13 (1) (a) of the Consumer Protection Regulations by offering a product that is “not of merchantable quality” and Section 17 (1) (d) which forbids a store from “causing a probability of confusion or of misunderstanding as to the legal rights, obligations, or remedies of a party to a transaction”.

We’ll keep you updated. I’m sure Edgars are going to do the decent thing.

As far as I can establish neither of these universities or the accreditation body have any history, not surprising as they seem only to have been created in the last few weeks.

I chatted to them online a short while ago and they confirmed that I could get a degree in "10 to 12" days, with no prior, relevant qualifications so long as I pay them US$648.

This is my conversation with them online:

Please wait for a site operator to respond.You are now chatting with 'Ethan Myers'
Ethan Myers: Hello. How may I assist you?Me: HiMe: I want to know how quickly I can get a bachelors degree
Ethan Myers: yes you canMe: i don't understand
Ethan Myers: you can get it in about 10 to 12 daysMe: oh that's brilliant, really that quickly?
Ethan Myers: yes
Ethan Myers: What we do is we take down your life experience, that is your working experience and your past educational qualification, convert them into credit hours, if these credit hours are equivalent to the credit hours that are require to complete your desired degree then you qualify and we award the degrees accordingly, if you are successfully evaluated we start with the registration process registering you and your documents with the university and the Accreditation bodies and after that we make sure that the documents are shipped out to you in the next 10 working days.Me: does that mean i don't have to study?
Ethan Myers: yes, no studies require if you have relevant working experienceMe: which university awards the degree?
Ethan Myers: Headway UniversityMe: and how much will this cost?
Ethan Myers: $648

No qualifications are required, they don't actually exist, they aren't actually accredited and all they want is money. They're fake. Simple really.

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